Notices by Angle (angle@anticapitalist.party)

Aaaagh, AI is so weird! Like, minor differences in words can make a huge, huge, huge difference in performance! And I thought I was picky about word usage and prone to 'Well, acktually'ing people over it, but apparently not enough! It's bizarre. I'm starting to get a feel for it, though. :/

Okay, tried a different system, found something much more reliable. Now have a fairly simple combination of technologies that's effectively a programmer slightly dumber than me but with vastly more experience - which overall, makes it a better programmer. And all this on my $2600 gaming PC. :/

So, uh, what now? This is, like, apocalyptic, in terms of my job prospects, isn't it? I've spent 15+ years learning to code, and now a $2600 computer + anybody with a handful of technical brain cells can outperform me? I mean, sure, I can use the thing too, probably better than a lot of them, but still... :/

Though I suppose that's missing the forest for the trees - the existing job market is the least of our worries. This going to completely reshape the economy. Like, technical expertise is going to get a thousand times cheaper overall... I have no idea what that does. Opens a lot of doors and wildly destabilizes existing structures, I guess? I dunno. It's terrifying. :X

On the other hand, one upside! I don't ever expect to be truly bored, in my entire life, ever again. XD

I guess there are some positives - if there was a technical problem you had that you struggled to solve because of a lack of expertise, good news! That problem will probably go away. On the other hand, uh, this will also remove a lot of barriers between people and the dangerous toys you don't want them to have, potentially? I dunno. And again, if you were hoping things would get less interesting, like, at any point, too bad lol. XD

Oh, and that's to say nothing of further developments in the field. If this is what I can do now, imagine what other people with more resources can do, or what will be possible later...?

Another note, running my local AI has caused me to indirectly learn a LOT about terminal commands, the linux filesystem, process management, test management, and all sorts of stuff. Like being able to sit and watch over the shoulder of another programmer who's not as smart as me, but *way*, *way* more experienced. And I've only been at it for a couple few weeks... :/

@purple I'm using Unsloths version of Devstral Q8_0, via LM Studio and Cline, and it's... Okay? Like, imagine someone who's genuinely a fair bit dumber than average, and not much good at anything besides coding... But has spent, like, 1000 years coding, and has gone through and used an inconceivably vast quantity of different tools and libraries. So, useful mainly for the stuff it knows, and less for its ability to apply it, but still quite useful.

@purple
I've never used any of the GPTs much, so I can't compare it, but if you have the hardware (~20GB VRAM) I'd definitely say give Devstral a shot and see how it works for you. :/

@purple Also note, from what I've heard OpenAI actually takes care to make sure that nothing they offer is particularly powerful - they don't turn a profit off of the models they make available and don't ever plan to, they just offer them so they can gather data on how they perform and use that to build bigger and better models. So, if you want to actually get your hands on something powerful and suited for your use case, you need to look elsewhere. :/

@purple Just use LM Studio? Should be a matter of minutes to get it set up and running, if you're got the hardware. Well, I guess you'll need to download the models, but that can be done quite comfortably in the background. :/

Messing around with Roo Code and LM Studio... And the tech clearly needs some work and requires a fair bit of skill to use correctly, but even so, it's kinda scary what it's capable of. Anybody else have experience with these tools? :/

I have no idea what the long term consequences of this will be, the thing is clearly far from it's final form. But I don't think we should just ignore it, it's going to be a big deal sooner or later...

Of course, the problem with the rapid pace of AI progress is that by the time we get a handle on any existing development, there's something new to figure out... So, not sure what to do about that. :/

Yeah, more on this: I go a decent setup, and now I think the damn thing is a better coder than I am. Still slower, and can't set it's own goals or anything, but still. Shit is getting real. :/

Anyway what I'm saying is, if you do code or computers in anyway, start learning all this AI stuff, like, yesterday. I use LM Studio and Roo Code personally, to start with, but whatever, pick something up and starting figuring it out, cause, ohhhh shit, it's time. :X

For what I've got right now, it's kinda like working with someone who's not that smart but has an incredibly broad range of experience - so, useful but you still need to a lot of the lifting yourself and will need to provide a lot of guidance. A tool for empowering people more than replacing them. The tech companies are all in on trying to develop versions that can replace people of course, because that's just how they roll. :/

Welp, trying to install linux on a fresh machine, and as usual, it's a fucking adventure. Tried both mx linux and linux mint, and I think both had the same problem - it 'loses' the thumb drive somewhere along the way and stops being able to read files from it for some reason? But not until after I've started the process. Motherboard is Z790 AORUS ELITE AX, for anyone who's curious. :/

Still working on this. Tried a lot of stuff, and made no progress. Might try updating the motherboard firmware next? Not sure yet. :/